Saturday, 27 April 2013

Continuing on from the Petrov line that Burgess' The Mammoth Book Of Chess tells us is best for Black if the White pawn is taken on move 3 are these two lines of play from I.A. Horowitz's Chess Openings.

Monday, 22 April 2013

A word of caution for those starting out with the Petrov –
if White takes the Pawn on his third move, Black shouldn’t immediately take
White’s Pawn.

As E. E. Cunnington says in Chess Opening For Beginners, "... the Pawn cannot escape." More
importantly, though – The Mammoth Book Of
Chess by Graham Burgess points out that if Black takes the Pawn with his
Knight, White then moving his Queen to e2 "wins material".

The Mammoth Book Of Chess illustrates a couple of lines with a real-life example (from then-future Grandmasters Nigel Short and David Norwood when they were ages 10 and 6 respectively) and the ideal play at move 4 for Black if he does in fact take the Pawn on move 3.

Saturday, 20 April 2013

When Black, it seems a nice way of saying right from the start, “Ok! You attack me - I attack you back!”

It doesn’t seem to be so popular lately due to it being considered an opening that often ends up with a draw, although Wikipedia mentions that "Grandmasters Karpov, Yusupov, Smyslov, Marshall, Kramnik, and Pillsbury have frequently played the Petrov as Black."

For my own sake as much as anyone else’s, I plan on going through my books and searching for Petrov’s Defence examples. There are a multitude of examples online, but hey, I like books (although the irony of then publishing them online isn’t lost on me...).

My old copy of David Brine Pritchard’s The Right Way To Play Chess simply states “Black answers the attack on his KP with a counter-attack on White’s KP.” [My copy actually has ‘on White’s QP’ printed, but that doesn’t make sense – White’s QP is quite safe at this point...] “White retains the minimal move advantage.”

Referring to another old book – Reverend E. E. Cunnington’s Chess Openings For Beginners, we find the following two examples of the opening: